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Congress Passes Sweeping Educatin Law

The new Elementary and Secondary Education Act will affect you in one way or another. So read up, take notes, and ask questions.

Back in 1975, IDEA--the federal Individuals With Disabilities Education Act--reshaped the American classroom by ushering in "inclusive" education. If you're still catching your breath from that one, sit down as you read about the newly amended and reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

The revised ESEA, dubbed the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 by its Congressional sponsors, will greatly impact the lives of educators and students over the life of its term, from Fiscal Year 2002 to FY 2007.

ESEA authorizes $26.5 billion in K-12 education program funding in FY 2002 alone and commits the nation to closing the student achievement gap over 12 years through "accountability, flexibility, and choice, so that no child is left behind."

While the new law, signed by President Bush on January 9, speaks to NEA's core priorities of student achievement and teacher quality, it does not fulfill a 26-year-old federal promise to pay 40 percent of the cost of special education.

And ESEA imposes six years of requirements on schools and cash-strapped state governments with no guarantee of resources after an initial $3.5 billion (20 percent) funding increase in FY 2002.

But NEA did mount a successful three-year lobbying campaign to keep damaging proposals out of ESEA and improve ESEA's "accountability" provisions, making them less punitive, more flexible, and more focused on the achievement of all students.

A Glimpse of the Law
For all of these hard-won protections, however, ESEA gives the federal government a new, hands-on role in public education that will directly affect you--in one way or another.

Among the many features of this 1,080-page statute:

• A 12-year goal to make every student "proficient" in state reading and math tests. By the 2005-06 school year, each state must administer annual reading and math tests of its own design in grades 3-8, and once between grades 9-12. The tests must be aligned to state standards and must include multiple measures of achievement.

  State achievement tests must measure both the performance of a whole school and that of disadvantaged "subgroups," to ensure that no single group of students is allowed to consistently underperform (for more).

  A school that displays a lack of "adequate yearly progress" will be given technical assistance and placed on a long-term improvement schedule with progressively stronger corrective measures, culminating in school "restructuring" or "reconstitution" in the seventh year. A school currently on a state improvement plan remains on the current schedule--it cannot "turn back the clock" to an earlier corrective stage.

• Civil rights protections. If a struggling school does not make adequate yearly progress for three consecutive years, the district must offer "supplemental educational services" chosen by parents from a list compiled by the state. These private or "community-based organizations" must demonstrate past performance and comply with civil rights laws--barring them from discriminating against either program participants or employees.

• Strong teacher quality provisions. Beginning with the 2002-03 school year, each district receiving Title I funds (to help disadvantaged children gain basic and advanced skills) must ensure that all teachers in a program supported by Title I are "highly qualified"--meaning they have been fully certified or licensed under state law and have demonstrated competence.

  Moreover, all new teachers entering the profession must take a written test. And every state must develop a plan to ensure that all teachers (not just those supported by Title I) teaching "core academic subjects" are highly qualified no later than the end of the 2005-06 school year (for more).

• Stronger quality provisions for Title I paraeducators. All Title I paras hired after January 8, 2002 must have two years of postsecondary education or be a high school graduate who can demonstrate--on a state or local assessment--the skills needed to assist in teaching reading, writing, or math. All existing Title I paras must meet one of these requirements within four years.

  ESEA lists allowable duties for Title I paras, specifies that they must work under the direct supervision of a classroom teacher, and prohibits them from substituting for a certified teacher (for more).

• Flexible grants for everything from professional development to school repair. The new law combines the previous Eisenhower Professional Development and Class Size Reduction programs into one program that funds a broad range of state and local training and recruitment activities--everything from innovative professional development to recruitment of highly qualified teachers to reduce class size. A cautionary note: Among the "allowable" uses for these grants are "tenure reform" and merit pay programs.

  ESEA also allows several new uses for the Innovative Grant Program for states and districts, including urgent school repairs and the hiring and support of school nurses. This program has been funded at $385 million in FY 2002.

  The Bush administration failed to gain unregulated statewide block grants for all 50 states--allowing the consolidation of all ESEA state funding for any purpose--but did gain provisions allowing up to seven states and 150 districts to consolidate funds from several programs into a block grant useable for any ESEA purpose.

• More money for reading programs. ESEA authorizes a huge spending increase for four federal reading and literacy programs, from $410 million in FY 2001 to $1.24 billion in FY 2002. Each program emphasizes professional development and--take careful note--the use of "scientifically based reading research" for instruction.

• Greater federal support for rural education. ESEA authorizes $300 million in FY 2002 and "such sums" for each of the next five years for two rural education programs. One program allows small, rural districts to consolidate allocations under a few major ESEA programs. The other, the new Rural and Low Income School Program, funds activities--subject to Title I regulations--to boost student achievement and the quality of instruction in poor rural schools.

For more on ESEA, go to the NEA Legislative Action Center at www.nea.org/lac/esea. To read the text of the law, go http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c107:h.r.1.enr:. For specific ESEA information from NEA, call 866/373-ESEA (3732).

Your Dues Will Do It
NEA Gears Up for ESEA Implementation

Now that ESEA has been signed into law, NEA and its state and local affiliates must push to ensure that the statute is adequately funded and fairly implemented.

This will be a huge challenge for NEA affiliates. For starters, they'll have to ensure that "transferable" and "flexible" grants go the right places; that rights of members are protected in student testing, school improvement, and teacher/para "quality" situations; and that collective bargaining and civil rights guarantees are upheld.

NEA is mounting an ESEA awareness campaign to "provide strategies and support systems for affiliate leaders and staff to capitalize on ESEA opportunities such as collective bargaining, professional development, ESP quality, and school district policy," says Deloris Rozier, NEA director of affiliate capacity building.

This effort will involve, among other things, national and regional conferences on ESEA, an NEA rapid response team, a dedicated Web site, and a toll-free number for members (now up and running at 866/373-ESEA).

The linchpin of ESEA enforcement will, of course, be UniServ staff. "We'll ask UniServ staffers what they need, and then ensure they are well educated on ESEA," Rozier says.

Adds Dorothy Harrell, NEA's newly appointed ESEA project coordinator: "UniServ staff will have easy access to interpretation of the law and its rules and regulations, and understand what discretion is allowed for states."

For more on ESEA, stayed tuned.

Your Dues Did It
10 Ways NEA Reshaped ESEA

The newly reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Education Act was dramatically improved through a dogged three-year lobbying campaign waged by NEA lobbyists, elected leaders, and local activists--including 80,000 member "cyberlobbyists" who took the teacher and ESP viewpoint directly to lawmakers.

Backed by 2.6 million educators, NEA's six-member team of ESEA lobbyists did what they do best. They scoured revision after revision of bill language, attended countless hearings, made detailed written comments, and built multi-organization coalitions around key educational issues.

At every level of NEA, "we lobbied hard on the issues," stresses NEA Government Relations Director Diane Shust. "We worked with key players on both sides of the aisle, and this bipartisan work paid dividends. Republicans helped us keep private tuition vouchers out of this bill!"

And through aggressive lobbying NEA made other gains, such as:

1. Fair, meaningful accountability measures that help rather than punish struggling schools--plus targeted funding for these schools.

2. Provisions that respect educators as individuals--and rejection of proposed requirements for testing current teachers.

3. Use of multiple measures to gauge student achievement.

4. Strong civil rights protections for ESEA program participants and employees--plus continued funding for hate crime prevention programs.

5. Increased professional development opportunities for paraeducators and limits on classroom duties for Title I paras--plus rejection of a proposed Title I para hiring freeze.

6. Rejection of a proposal for unregulated statewide ESEA block grants.

7. Continued support for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards--which had been slated to lose all of its federal funding.

8. New flexibility and resources for rural schools.

9. Continued protection of collective bargaining rights and civil liability for teachers.

10. Rejection of a proposal requiring parents of ESL students to "opt in" to a Limited-English-Proficient Program. The new ESEA allows parents to remove their children immediately from such a program and removes arbitrary time limits on bilingual services.